Field of Invention
The present application relates to the medium access control operations of the radio access networks of wireless broadband communication systems, and more particularly, methods and apparatus for virtualizing the available wireless system resources and decoupling the user scheduling operation from the operation of resource assignment in base stations.
Discussion of Related Art
This invention is concerned with the specification of a method and apparatus for the virtualization of wireless resources for a wireless system where multiple virtual MAC layer slices may operate simultaneously in a base station. While the scheduling operations conducted by the virtual MAC layers decide on which users and flows will get service, the assignment of the physical wireless resources to these users and flows is decoupled from such scheduling operations.
The patent application US 20110029347 A1 presents a wireless network virtualization scheme, where each MVNO bids for resource blocks by providing a per-user rate-utility function to the network operator. The Mobile Network Operator (MNO) who owns the network in return makes rate allocations to each MVNO, set current and future prices for the resource blocks, based on sum-utility maximization across all users. MVNOs transfer the bytes for each user based on the allocation and update utility functions of each user.
The patent application US 20130094486 A1 discloses a virtualization scheme for wireless local area networks, where multiple virtual access points sharing the same physical access point are granted time shares to access the resources of the physical access point for transmitting the data packets of users associated with the said virtual access points over the wireless medium.
The patent application US 20120044876 A1 discloses a virtualized base station belonging to an operator A and a mobile subscriber of another operator B can access to its home network (i.e., B) after a virtual base station that is part of operator B is instantiated on the virtualized base station that belongs to operator A.
The patent specification U.S. Pat. No. 8,873,482 B2 discloses a wireless network virtualization substrate at the scheduling layer, where bandwidth and/or slot reservations are requested from the virtualization substrate. The virtualization substrate first picks a slice to schedule over a slot (e.g., after sorting each slice with respect to the ratio of bandwidth/resource allocated and bandwidth/resource reserved). The invention also includes utility maximization based allocation strategies in deciding which slice should be assigned to which slot. Then, the virtualization substrate schedules the flows of the selected slice on the allocated slots. Each slice can control the ordering of flows and packets by specifying the scheduling policy for its own flows, putting virtual time tags in the packet headers, or any other means that do not impede the line speed processing.
The patent specifications U.S. Pat. No. 8,351,948 B2 and U.S. Pat. No. 8,700,047 B2 both disclose a customizable flow management in a cellular base station, where a plurality of custom flow management schedulers coexists on the same base station. Each flow management scheduler executes a flow management function, which can be configured and programmed by an external entity to change the flow selection process in each scheduler.
The patent application US 20120002620 A1 discloses a method for remotely virtualizing the flows from an entity external to the base station without modifying the base station itself. The virtualization entity shapes the traffic flows and schedules them before forwarding them to the base station entity. A synchronizing function on the external entity prevents packets being backlogged at the base station by matching the shaped traffic rate to the base station's transmission rate.
The patent specification U.S. Pat. No. 8,874,125 B2 discloses a method where a plurality of individually virtualized base stations in a radio access network is shared by multiple entities. At an aggregator/gateway node, resources are allocated centrally to each entity on all base stations connected to the said aggregator node. Aggregator/gateway node dynamically computes the optimal resource share of each entity on each base station based on revenue maximization. The computed shares are passed onto the scheduler at each base station, where the resource shares of entities are locally enforced.
Embodiments of the present invention are an improvement over prior art systems and methods.